The last power metal band I saw in person, Keep of Kalessin, had a group of 6 men (all tall, dressed in jeans and a plain black t-shirt, and with long, straight, blonde hair) come on stage for the closing song, all of them stood bolt upright and acted as a backing choir at the final moment. It's not a Steinway on stage, but a charming touch of theatrics going above and beyond what's expected of a band opening for someone else.

Thing learned from my music tech classes: recording a grand is really damn complicated. I do like the hard attack sound with mic right over the strings for rock music, though the tone isn't very pure. Don't know how that would work for metal, as it's probably not suited for any other genre outside of ragtime.

feeling this as an argument for a specific kind of authenticity, in which only a few people are ever going to hear this, but they are going to feel it in their hearts, they are going to know when you half-assed this section or that, so you might as well go as deep as possible and return with something ideologically pure or at least made of crystal

but i don't know, seeing as we're preferring an actual instrument to its substitutions and disguised versions, and this is also catering to the refined senses of a small audience, and also how the use of this specific instrument is completely instrumental in the overall grandeur and majesty of the work, hallmarks of the genre... it kind of reads like authenticity to me, but a good kind, one where you can feel proud that they nailed that sound, accessed that feeling that you sought.

Laziness is certainly what shits me about autotune. If you can't sing in tune, don't. Or live with that fact. Or learn to. Autotune for its own sake, on the other hand is fine, yeah it's a novelty sound, but it's not about covering up a deficiency. I'm less certain when it comes to keyboards, as they're not my bag, but again, if it's about sound and actually being interested in the instruments, then yes.

I kept thinking though: when you talk about these things, you are talkin' about your Korgs and Kurtzweils playing their native sounds.

My buddy Dan made a record this year where he played MIDI keys, and they ran the signal through a patch that was a grand piano sampled from Abbey Road studios--the Abbey Road instrument pack that this studio had was apparently an insanely expensive one. To MY ears, it ain't even different. It sounds like a real piano.

What do you guys think of that? 'Cause it weirded me out.

Logged

This year's Village Voice Jizz and Pap list had a whole lot of birds I'd never even heard of before.

It wouldn't sound the same because MIDI doesn't allow variations in the sound of the attack. A soft press of a piano key does not sound like a hard press with the volume turned down. It would also not do a good job of handling the sounds produced by the pedals.

It wouldn't sound the same because MIDI doesn't allow variations in the sound of the attack. A soft press of a piano key does not sound like a hard press with the volume turned down. It would also not do a good job of handling the sounds produced by the pedals.

Though some sample sets do have different samples for different velocity notes. I mean, it's still graduated in much larger increments (considering there is essentially an infinite number of velocities you can get with a hammer-and-string piano), so ultimately you're right.

And even the pedal stuff is something you can manipulate with effects.

I guess my point is that MIDI that uses samples, depending on where it sits in the mix, can be much more convincing than any fakeass piano sound on a keyboard.

MIDI is just one type of digitised sound, so not too much should be placed on that, but what MIDI sounds like is MIDI. It's sound is crisp, clipped and dynamically flat, even if you have a sufficiently well-rounded patch running like what our man Biggens describes, which would at least give it a bit of timbre.

I happen to quite like the sound of MIDI in places - I've spent too many hours listening to the awesome Transport Tycoon soundtrack to feel otherwise - but digitised sound =/= mechanically produced sound, for a hundred different reasons. Pianos change their sound depending on the moisture in the air, if it's an upright the features of the wall it stands against matters, the strings reverberate with each other while the pedal is up, the age of the strings matters, etc. etc. Individually these features are too small for most anybody to pick out, especially if you're not listening out for them, but their combination is why you can sensibly talk about something sounding organic. Real instruments sound organic, and a digitised sound would have to be a hell of a lot more complex than MIDI to do so.

MIDI is just one type of digitised sound, so not too much should be placed on that, but what MIDI sounds like is MIDI. It's sound is crisp, clipped and dynamically flat, even if you have a sufficiently well-rounded patch running like what our man Biggens describes, which would at least give it a bit of timbre.

digitised sound =/= mechanically produced sound, for a hundred different reasons. Pianos change their sound depending on the moisture in the air, if it's an upright the features of the wall it stands against matters, the strings reverberate with each other while the pedal is up, the age of the strings matters, etc. etc. Individually these features are too small for most anybody to pick out, especially if you're not listening out for them, but their combination is why you can sensibly talk about something sounding organic. Real instruments sound organic, and a digitised sound would have to be a hell of a lot more complex than MIDI to do so.

I mean, dude, I know this shit. I have, you know, been playing live instruments for nearly all my life and composing in MIDI et al. for at least half of it.